


In A Foxhole

by Nagaina



Series: Cursebroken [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: CW: semi-explicit description of serious injury, CW: serious but nonfatal injury, CW: supernatural shenanigans, CW: vampire-related shenanigans, M/M, cw: blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 07:37:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17442680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaina/pseuds/Nagaina
Summary: A quick scouting mission in the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest -- hop in, hop out, report back if the situation requires more attention. Shouldn't be a problem for experienced hexenjaeger Jesse McCree and his not-quite-a-vampire partner, Hanzo Shimada, right?It's a totally a problem.





	In A Foxhole

Ten hours, twenty-six minutes, seventeen seconds. That  _ had _ to be a record of some kind. Not the  _ shortest _ time it took for an operation to go firmly tits-up — that distinction was still held by  _ sixteen minutes flat _ , the sixteen minutes that had cost him half an arm, four good friends, and too many sleepless nights to count since. Nor was it the  _ longest _ , which was the month and a half he’d spent in Guatemala at the peak of the rainy season, hunting something that, when caught, proved to be a threat not to locals as he’d been led to believe but to the interests of wealthy foreign investors wanting to turn its otherwise unspoiled hunting range into a pot plantation. Returning the retainer on that one had sucked, quite a lot harder than the critter itself. 

 

Still. Not even half a day  _ definitely _ stood out.

 

“Jesse.” The voice in his ear was soft but tense, breath a cold puff along his cheek. “Are you okay? You’re talking to yourself again.”

 

He turned his head and opened his mouth to argue and found a look of such naked concern gracing Hanzo’s face that he lost the heart for a fight almost immediately. “I’m all right.” Concern shaded into disbelief and he was forced to admit he wasn’t even convincing himself. “I’ll make it where we’re goin’. Promise.”

 

“I will hold you to that.” Hanzo informed him, just short of grimly. He adjusted Jesse’s intact arm where it was draped over his shoulders and his own arm around Jesse’s waist and their course the degree or two that they’d drifted, following the green-glowing sphere of ghostfire leading the way, barely visible in the snowfall.

 

Jesse concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, keeping his head down to smooth out their wind profile, ignoring the deep burning pain and slow-spreading numbness from the wounds in his side and in his leg. Which was, frankly, asking quite a lot of said concentration as the wind knifed down off the mountains and did its best to knock them sideways with their awkward center of gravity, sent gusts of snow to blind and freeze them and reduce the glow of their guide to a pale green smear in the stormy halflight. By the time they caught up with the ghostfire, his left leg was numb from hip to toes and the stitch in his side felt like a small, furious critter with extremely sharp claws was trying to burrow through his chest lengthwise, and he suspected that he’d likely feel that way even were he not wounded and poisoned. 

 

Beneath the trees it was darker, the footing trickier until the ghostlight guided them to the path, itself only better than nothing because of the periodically-placed wardstones keeping lurking nasties at bay. Hanzo stumbled and cursed as they came athwart one, startled more than hurt, and fumbled his grip, which took them both to their knees amid the roots and fallen needles and drifted snow.

 

“I’m sorry.” Hanzo got his feet under him and levered Jesse back up as well by main strength, teeth sharp and long and clenched in frustration. “Caught me by surprise.”

 

“No need.” He heard the slur in his own voice, felt he should be at least as alarmed as Hanzo looked but somehow wasn’t. “Shoulda warned ya.”

 

Hanzo visibly bit down on what he wanted to say, held him still when he tried to start walking again. “How far? Do you know?”

 

“Not exactly.” Which he regretted as soon as he said it. “Can’t be —”

 

A howl rose above the roar of the wind — not a wolf’s howl, or a coyote’s, or anything natural, but the sort of spine-curling noise that sank past flesh and bone and blood and went straight for the soul. Had Jesse been any ordinary person, his knees would have gone watery and his brain would have turned to warm gelatin and whatever that thing was would have found him curled up in fetal position waiting to die. Had Hanzo been any ordinary person, he wouldn’t have put his head up and scented the air like some wild thing, crimson overtaking amber in his pretty eyes as the last of the color fled his cheeks. Between one moment and the next, Jesse found himself heaved off the ground and across his partner’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He cried out, involuntarily, as the movement jarred his side, his leg, and then the trees were blurring past as Hanzo set off at a ground-devouring run, unnaturally quick and agile, their ghostfire guide only barely able to keep pace. 

 

They came into the clearing not long after, just long enough for Jesse to wish for the bliss of senselessness, the cabin looming out of the gloom. It’d been a ranger station at one point before the Order had acquired it and set it up as a safehouse, so new he’d never been there before, despite working the Pacific Northwest regularly over the years. Hanzo, mercifully, let him down easy on the porch. “Key’s —”

 

Hanzo had already found the keys which made Jesse wonder if he’d blacked out for a bit there and Hanzo didn’t  _ quite _ pick him up to get him inside, but it was a near thing. A second howl, closer, echoed among the trees and his partner took the time to close the door and flip the ward-locks as well as the physical ones, and checked the windows to make sure they were secure. Jesse limped his way to one of the cots and sat down, leaned against the wall, tried to consider their situation only to have his thoughts slide away into a gray haze of pain and exhaustion. He came back to himself with a jolt as Hanzo laid hands on him, opening his coat, the first aid kit already open on the cot next to them.

 

“Don’t fight,” Hanzo advised him as he peeled away layers of bloody cloth and the sodden biotic-impregnated bandages, “or I swear by all the gods that ever were, I’ll —”

 

“S’okay, darlin’. You won’t get any arguments outta me, not right now.” Hanzo’s fangs were down and interfering with his elocution, turning his sibilants into hisses; his eyes were burning crimson, and the need to talk him down was self-evident. “Breathe. We’re safe here, at least for now.”

 

“What  _ was _ that thing?” Hanzo had antiseptic wound wipes and biotic gel and fresh bandages, which he put to good use on the mauled flesh covering Jesse’s ribs. “Not one of those  _ sásq’ets _ things you told me about.”

 

“Nah.” His vision washed briefly white with pain and his response came out in a gasp as Hanzo applied the bandages with a bit more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary. “They’re not hostile. Not like that. Worst they do nowadays is throw rocks an’ hoot an’ steal folks’ garbage cans.”

 

Moving carefully, they got him laid down and his boots set aside and Hanzo took a utility knife to his pants to get them off which, under better circumstances, would have been a turn-on of a dangerous sort. Hanzo hissed as he exposed skin, and Jesse winced, groaned aloud as he peeled away the blood-caked bandages. Freed of the compression, the wound throbbed, hot and awful, no longer numb.

 

“Poisoned.” Hanzo’s hands were cool and gentle and, even so, Jesse had to bury his face in his arm and bite down to hold back a cry. “Why didn’t you  _ tell _ me, I would have —”

 

“Would’a run yourself ragged jus’ gettin’ us here.” Jesse wheezed. “Not — the best use’a your talents.”

 

“My talents have been  _ spectacularly _ useless thus far.” Hanzo replied, angry but not with him as he went about the task of cleaning the triple-row of deep punctures in the meat of Jesse’s thigh. 

 

“Not true,” Jesse replied, once the urge to scream bloody murder went away. “You saved my ass back there. That thing did not wanna tangle with you. Probably means you can hurt it bad.”

 

“Perhaps I  _ should. _ ” Hanzo replied, viciously, and injected him with half a vial of undifferentiated biotic antitoxin, layered a couple cursebreaker charms in with the bandages, just in case. Most of the time, magic like that wouldn’t take root in a hexenjaeger’s blood and flesh but this thing was an unknown quantity. A little extra caution was warranted. “I am going to give you a painkiller — a strong one.”

 

“No, d —” Too late. Alchemical relief flowed through his veins and the sudden diminishment of pain was almost enough to rob him of his senses, did dull his awareness of the world down to softness and shadows as Hanzo packed away the medical supplies, tucked a pair of pillows under his head and neck, draped a regular blanket and then a weighted shock blanket over him, and brought the high efficiency ceramic space heater to life. The cabin was a two room affair, compact, set up for two, four if they weren’t opposed to sleeping close and double on park service cots. Jesse wasn’t averse but he knew Hanzo was and so he didn’t ask his partner to cuddle up with him, even though the cool of his body would feel oh so very good against the fever heating his veins. Knew Hanzo was fighting every instinct in his body right now, with all that free mostly-human blood lying around, and was silently proud of him for it.

 

A cool, damp cloth stroked his brow, his cheeks and he opened his eyes enough to find Hanzo swimming woozily in and out of focus, eyes more amber than red, fangs less obviously in evidence. “I activated the rescue transponder. If we have to wait, how long will it take?”

 

It took him a too-long moment to remember how to make his tongue work. “Depends. Seattle relay’s closest. No tellin’ who’ll get the call from there.” It was taking entirely too much effort to keep his eyes open. “Darlin’ if you can get outta here you should.”

 

“No.” Hanzo replied, soft but fierce. “I’m not leaving you. I —”

 

A howl, and now there was no doubting how close it might be, as something huge and heavy landed on the roof in accompaniment. 

 

“I,” Hanzo rose, eyes flickering redly, “am going to kill that fucking thing and harvest its venom sacs for analysis.”

 

“God, I love you.” Jesse breathed, as exhaustion and fever and darkness pulled him down. “Go kick its ass, honey.”

 

Some days later, once Jesse regained consciousness and after Angie reamed his ass for walking eight miles on a compromised leg when he had a perfectly good not-a-vampire there willing to carry him, Hanzo paid a call and offered him the chance to take those words back. Jesse declined.


End file.
